Ruler or Reality
When a number jumps, check whether customers moved or the ruler did.
The job
Stops leaders funding, firing or announcing because of a jump caused by a change in how things are measured, not by customers: a new tagging model, reworded categories, a newly connected data source or a model upgrade. It prices each false alarm stopped.
The moment
The CFO is about to approve a $4.2 million emergency billing programme because billing complaints rose 22% in August.
On the leadership screen, that number already carries an amber warning that the measurement changed, not the customers. The jump lands exactly on 14 August, the day a new complaint-tagging model went live.
Over two weeks of running old and new side by side, the old method shows a rise of just 1%. 1,380 complaints about a service outage had been relabelled as billing.
With the series joined up, the trend is flat and the programme is paused.
The running tally reads: 3 false alarms stopped this year, and $6.9 million not spent on problems that were not real.
What it does
- Log a method change
- Stamp the break verdict and adjustment factor
- Record a paused decision
- Notify tile and KPI owners
- Drill relabelled items
What you see
A tape measure laid over the chart: break markers, an old-versus-new ruler overlay with a relabelling grid, a spliced series, and a running ledger of false alarms averted
What it moves
False alarms stopped each year (the number and dollar value of programmes paused or rescoped), and the share of KPI jumps on leaders' screens checked against the log of changes before the meeting.
Built for
- Finance
- Analysts & data
- CX leaders & VoC
- Executives & leadership
